On March 7, staff from APGA, the American Gas Association (AGA), and Spire met with representatives from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to discuss concerns of a pending Department of Energy (DOE) notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) pertaining to commercial water heating equipment energy conservation standards (ECS).
OMB is part of the Executive Office of the President and oversees the implementation of the administration’s policies and budget across all federal agencies. Before an agency can issue major regulations or proposed regulations, it must first submit the rule to OMB for review.
While the commercial water heating ECS NOPR is not yet publicly available, DOE sent it to OMB for review in late January. The NOPR would restart the rulemaking process for the commercial water heaters. A prior NOPR for these appliances had been withdrawn in January 2021 in response to APGA and others’ petition for an interpretive rule to establish separate product classes for condensing and non-condensing gas-fired appliances—an interpretive rule that has since been revoked.
APGA, AGA, and Spire requested the meeting, as all are concerned that the NOPR might set minimum efficiency standards that could create a de facto ban on non-condensing equipment. Additionally, in January 2022, two major events occurred that could impact the NOPR and likely weren’t taken into account due to the timing of DOE’s submission to OMB. Those events are the publication of a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics peer-reviewed report critiquing DOE’s appliance efficiency rulemaking methods that recommends several important improvements to the process and the D.C. Circuit Court’s order in the APGA v. DOE litigation pertaining to DOE’s lack of justification in its commercial packaged boiler rulemaking. The March 7 teleconference was an opportunity to raise these and any related concerns.
OMB takes at least 30 days (but often more) to review rules before sending them back to the agency, which will then make any adjustments, if needed, and then publish in the Federal Register to officially begin the notice and comment period. The commercial water heater ECS NOPR has been with OMB for over 30 days, but there is no set timeframe for when it will be sent back to DOE for publication. APGA staff will continue to closely monitor this rulemaking and engage as appropriate.
Meeting information, including a list of participants and materials presented, is available
here.
APGA, AGA, and Spire also hope to meet with OMB to discuss the NOPR pertaining to ECS for residential non-weatherized gas furnaces and mobile home gas furnaces (i.e., the furnace rule), which is also under OMB review.
For questions regarding this article, please contact Renée Lani of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0836 or by email at
rlani@apga.org.